


the empress

by relationshipcrimes



Series: heirs [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relationshipcrimes/pseuds/relationshipcrimes
Summary: In her earliest memories, she is in her father's garden, waiting to return home.
Relationships: Okumura Haru & Okumura Kunikazu
Series: heirs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667623
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	the empress

In her earliest memories, she is in her father's garden, waiting to return home. She is turning the mulch over. She is exposing the little critters underneath and pulling up the naked roots with patient hands. She is not a patient girl. She is not a person with a natural green thumb or any innate love for plants and soil and small things, but she is a person with a love of her father, who is not home yet but will be coming very, very soon. She is clearing the dirt to have something to do, pulling out the dandelions that her father told her were weeds, and she is imagining that her father is there with her, pointing out inside her head which ones to pull and which ones to nurture. _If_ , her father had asked her, _you follow a blueprint for a design, what's the product: the blueprint or the design?_ If the design only carries out the instructions laid out in the blueprint, then what is of value? _Who gets paid: The producer, or the person giving the producer the instructions?_ Her father is sitting beside her in the garden, pointing at what weeds to pull. He is miles away at his important business meeting, sifting through pages and pages of new product pitches to approve. He is checking if she has scattered the fertilizer and if she has spaced out the seeds, and he is distant in the eyes and muttering angrily into his phone. He is staring into his computer screen to calculate the value of human life. He is pretending that he doesn't care that they left their family home for a bigger, fancier, colder penthouse. He is ignoring his wife's deathdate. He is in the instructions that he gave her once, to tend to her little plot of land and make it smaller, deeper, richer, warmer. He is peeling her fingers apart and pulling out the bugs that she crushed in anger. _You are better than this_ , her father is saying. _Are you going to bow to the world's injustices? Or will you make them bow to you?_ She is kneading the fertilizer into the soil, getting the dirt and compost under her nails; she is listening to her father tell her: _This is your garden to tend. Whether you like it or not, it will be what you do. Your actions have consequences, so you must become the master of both. Have patience. Be kind._ _To these flowers, you are their whole world_. And she is crying that night, crushed under the blankets by the weight of all the mistakes she hasn't yet made, and her father cradling her head to his shoulder. Her father is at the end of a very long hallway, which she has not been down in years, and she is dressed in impeccable heels and coats to stay warm all on her own. She is in the garden following the words her father gave her: _It will be what you do. Have patience. Be kind._ She is not a perfect gardener. Her crop comes out flawed, and probably always will no matter how good she gets; it is a violence in itself to create and damn it to live with your decisions. The work in and of itself is flawed. She is under the blankets, and her father is coming into her room without turning on the lights, asking her why she is crying over mistakes she hasn't made but will come to make. She is waiting for her father and she is waiting to return home, where their little apartment under the highway intersection is still miraculously standing and her father is in the peeling, leaking, cracking foyer, telling her: _To these flowers, you are their whole world_. She is in her father's garden, returning the little dark living things in the earth under their covers and tucking them into the dirt with patient hands. She is raising the earth the way she was told by someone she has not seen in many many years and still loves with her whole heart. She is waiting to return home. She is holding love in her heart and kindness in her arms, she is the master of action and consequence, the very tiny unshakable heir of her plot of dirt, still tending it the way that her father taught her; and it is only many years later that she remembers that her father never once told her anything about gardening.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter [@p5crimes](https://twitter.com/p5crimes)  
> tumblr [@akechicrimes](http://akechicrimes.tumblr.com)


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